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Facing a legislative election in 2016, state legislative leaders scrupulously avoided the wrath of voters by unscrupulously passing a fraudulent state budget that, they claimed, was “balanced.”

Final numbers from the fiscal year that ended June 30 demonstrate the legislators’ penchant for legerdemain. Now lawmakers are trying to figure out how to fill the hole they dug last year.

Total revenue collections increased by 2.5 percent over the previous fiscal year, which would be good news but for the budgetary context. To make the budget appear to be balanced, legislators plugged in an anticipated revenue projection of a whopping 6 percent.

That is the same bogus method that the legislators use to make the state’s pension calamity appear less severe than it is.

Relative to the budget, the use of the phony revenue projection is especially disingenuous. Lawmakers know that the state can’t achieve the projected return because they also have created or preserved massive tax breaks and loopholes for their favored interests.

Last week, legislators passed a $32 billion appropriations package without deciding how to pay for it, so they have missed the constitutional budget deadline of July 1. Now they have until July 10 at midnight to pass an actual budget before that package becomes law with or without Gov. Tom Wolf’s signature.

So far legislators have trotted out bad ideas that don’t resolve anything, including up to $1.5 billion borrowing to pay for routine government business. And most recently, some Republican lawmakers have expressed a willingness to punish the poor for the Legislature’s own ineffectiveness by slashing Medicaid.

Lawmakers could, of course, solve the revenue issue through tax reform and adjustments to broaden and make fairer the state’s tax structure. But that would be governing in the broad public interest.

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